


the fear of falling apart

by poeticaid



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Boarding School, Dark Jason Grace, Delusions, Depression, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Gen, HEAVY FUCKING ANGST, Memories, Murder, Post-Canon, Post-The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo), Post-The Heroes of Olympus, Pre-The Trials of Apollo, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Street Fights, The Fear of Falling Apart, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-31 23:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18324557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticaid/pseuds/poeticaid
Summary: Jason laughs, but it wasn't his; it was manic, a laugh only meant for villains like Krios or Porphyrion. His brain ticks back to the good times he had, but by now his good times were less than the bad times. Fighting this no-name boy in an alley fight is a good time.He's turning to a villain.Whatever.Multiple memories and lives he can't control; he must live through it all.Sequel toall my wolves begin to howl, oh wake me up the time is now





	the fear of falling apart

**Author's Note:**

> what's up? it's the sequel :p
> 
> the format of this work is inspired by [cosmicpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet)

**+55**

Jason has a conscience. He really does. Finding himself surrounded with a group of criminals was just making his very pissed. They really want his money even if he doesn't even have any. Criminals these days. He's handled _worse_.

But for some reason, in the entirety of his fake and manipulated life, he feels scared. No one was there to help him, and he was on his own.

He could've dealt with it rationally; gave them his personal items and wait for them to take leave, or wait for them to stab him with one of their weapons. Instead, he does the least rational thing in the world of demigods.

He leaves the crime scene with a smug smile.

* * *

**-12**

He's not a nobody, he tells himself.

He has always hated the role of being a praetor ever since he had been appointed as it. He values it, but after this journey, he just doesn't want to ever return to become a praetor again. He wants to be close to Piper, to not feel conflicted on who he really belongs to. As much as he loves Reyna as a friend, it'd probably be best if Frank takes the leader position.

Jason lets the monsters hurt him as memories of him and Reyna floods his mind. He doesn't even feel the pain of monster's claws digging to his skin, gnawing on his flesh, their sharp teeth doesn't bother him anymore.

"Thanks for the memories", Jason mutters under his breath. It doesn't sound like a curse to Juno, but it is. "Even though they weren't so great."

He's hurt.

He's been hurt for fifteen years, and more to come.

Light them up.

* * *

**+21**

Jason knows he shouldn't be doing this.

As a Pontifex Maximus, a maker of shrines and a role model to his fellow Greek and Romans, he shouldn't be doing something as scandalous as buying drugs.

After Chiron forced him to transfer to an all boys' school, he has been exposed to the horrors of the human world.

Jason sighs as he packs his things and heads to his dorm room, where he throws his bag on his bed and goes through his bathroom to find something to enlighten him with. He takes out a bag of weed and starts to smoke. In most schools, they'd prohibit this kind of behavior but his teachers don't care enough for all the students in their school, even if they were a bunch of unruly teenager boys. Jason should be an exception of that, but he just can't do it anymore.

With the stress of having to live his entire life as Pontifex Maximus and being a _normal_ student at a _normal_ school, he just has to let go for a little while. Especially when all teachers label you as a trouble maker because you can't sit still or can't read English.

He wants to go back to New Rome now.

He wonders what would Piper say about this, how Chiron would react to this behavior of his.

_How Leo would feel._

Jason sighs as he slumps on his bed, looking at the plain ceiling. He hates being plain.

He is not plain.

* * *

**-1**

With his choice, he ruins all ties with his Roman family. He wishes to live in Camp Half-Blood, but he states that he can always visit them, since he'd be going back-and-forth both camps.

They're not amused.

Why do they have the _right_ to be mad at him?

He loves his family, he really does; the Greek and Roman family. But they're all fickle. Even him. He's not going to lie.

Even Leo.

He should stop crying about him. What's done is done.

At least Octavian is dead.

* * *

**+49**

He wonders why he even bothers with such stupidity. One moment he was headed to one of his useless classes when he is overcome by cutting classes, and so he does. What was Chiron even thinking? Does he think he can survive a boarding school full of assholes?

He's turning to another one of them, and it hurts his demigod pride.

And he was here in an alley, beating up a boy. When did he stoop so low and how? Seconds before they fought the boy had a proud stance and a smug smile, but all of that fades after Jason threw a punch at him. Jason was losing on their first round, but he's gotten the hang of it. He wasn't a monster, but battling someone who was as human as Jason would be seems so refreshing.

His face was bruised but he barely feels anything. He spits out blood to his perpetrator and kicks him on the face, breaking his nose. The boy howls in pain and Jason took the pleasure of loving it, his frown slowly turning to a grin as he slams the boy to a brick wall.

Jason laughs, but it wasn't his; it was manic, a laugh only meant for villains like Krios or Porphyrion. His brain ticks back to the good times he had, but by now his good times were less than the bad times. Fighting this no-name boy in an alley fight is a _good_ time.

He's turning to a villain.

Whatever.

He drops the boy on a puddle, and the boy cowers underneath Jason's shadow.

"Look, I swear, I won't do that to you again!" He was stammering and shivering, from the cold or from Jason, he didn't know.

Jason wasn't listening to this boy's petty promises. He turns and leaves this boy to die from his wounds.

* * *

**-144**

Piper suggested a therapist after freeing Juno. So that's why he was here in a therapist's office. He wishes that he has a therapist in New Rome, but all of them hates him after that little stunt he did with those assholes back when he was still a boy.

Just the voice of the therapist makes him panic. Why is he even panicking?

"Jason Grace, do not panic, I am here to help you", the therapist says. That's the exact thing the therapists in New Rome told him the past years.

Jason glares at him with such intensity that the therapist leans back. "You don't know me."

He digs his fingers into his palms.

"I am here to help you, Mister Grace."

"Yeah, alright." He's bleeding again. He should've cut his nails rather than let them grow long.

He reminds himself that he's doing this for his girlfriend.

* * *

**+100**

He's trashing his whole dorm again.

Ripping apart his curtains, bedsheets, toppling over the drawes and cabinets, banging his head into his wall until it cracks and his head is bleeding and his whole vision blurs-

He goes to the bathroom to clean his stomach as he grabs one of the bags of weed again. He electrocutes himself, and he hides his blueprints for the gods' temples under his bed and starts to burn his bed, destroying all months of his work, because nothing else really matters.

If Piper left him because of his unstable condition, that's his fault and the way he is ever since day one.

He finally thought he found someone who can shelter him from the hardships in the world, but of course, love doesn't always last long. He was so foolish to believe that their love would last a multiple lifetimes. Something as equally beautiful and cruel as love is the best curse to give to a person.

He's going to start over with the blueprints of his temples, because nothing is perfect in the whole world. He's going to start over, to the beginning, to where he had gone wrong.

He isn't, so why is he even trying to be the golden boy everyone likes?

* * *

**-20**

He feels guilty for saying that to Hazel, one of his only friends in Camp Jupiter. He, Hazel and Nico had bonded over many things; so why did he have the right on saying something so hurtful to her?

He hates himself so much that Hazel doesn't even look at him in the eyes. She started to trust him less, value him as a stranger. He wishes they can go back to the time they were comfortable with one another, where they all shared their food, or take Reyna's dogs Aurum and Argentum on a walk, anything but the cold shoulder she's giving him.

He sighs as he pulls Piper to a hug, bothered by the fact that he never hugged either Reyna and Hazel after his return.

* * *

**+169**

It's as if his whole life is a curse. When he was still a child, he was messed up, and growing up, he was still the most messed up person anyone would see.

Percy and Annabeth may be unlucky to have fallen through Tartarus, but at least they had each other, through thick and thin. Nico di Angelo may have had a troubled childhood, but at least Will Solace is there to guide him.

Jason sighs, looking at the bed he burned months ago. Realization only strikes him there and then.

_He's falling apart._

He can't just be falling apart after every goddamn obstacle the gods throw at them, he just can't. For once in his life, he feels anxious about how he's going to end up in the near future if his building blocks of life keep stumbling.

_The fear of falling apart looms closer to him._

* * *

**-153**

He's never been _this_ angry before. How dare Khione, that fucking rat from Boreas' palace, imprison his sister in a sheet of ice? Lightning crackles forth his veins, and he wants to vaporize this goddess into plain nothingness.

What a bitch.

I hope she fucking dies.

* * *

**+180**

_No._

That Sphinx had to be joking.

Not again.

He doesn't want anyone to die anymore.

Especially Piper. Why would she want this kind of fate? Why would _he_ want the fate of dying?

No.

He's not going to let that happen.

Stop that.

The gods will forever be ignorant of the way their children would feel.

Jason hates Jupiter so much, in all his forms.

* * *

**-100**

He is alone in the cabin, as always. He can see Hippie Zeus staring down at him with his stern look, and Jason glares back at it. He pulls a recorder out of his pillow, something Chiron adviced him to do so so he won't bottle up his feelings anymore.

He sighs as he turns the recorder on.

_"Lately, I've been thinking that I'm insane."_

He stops the recorder with no exposition in it and goes back to sleep. His recordings are short and hard to interpret.

What a nice way of venting.

* * *

**+177**

He's having one of his delusions again. Jason wants to stop smoking weed or inhaling anything chemical, but he can't help it, he's already on the edge of the cliff, waiting to be thrown off the chasm, to where Beryl Grace waits for him with open arms. Appropriately, his delusion is about his mother Beryl Grace, who was standing over his crumpled form as he tries to find a way out of this delusion.

_"We're never going to be apart, my Jason", she says._

Jason is hyperventilating as he throws objects at the hallucination of his mother whom he had warded of in Odysseus' palace, but it has little to no effect. He locks himself in the bathroom, breathing so hard that he might've wounded his lungs for every single time this has happened in his entire time in here.

Rapidly, he checks every nook and corner of the bathroom to see if Beryl Grace is truly gone, and if she is, that'd make him happy, or enlightened, he thinks. And then-

"Oh, Jason, how I've missed you."

With a wail of despair, Jason claws through the bathroom walls, maddeningly searching for a way out, ignoring the door behind him. His hands are in pain, but he doesn't notice it, even when its blood trickles down his arms. Instead of finding an exist however, or making one of those, he had vandalized the bathroom walls with his own fingernails, which had been chipped off during writing the gnarly message.

It read, _"I AM JASON GRACE AND I EXIST."_

It was so beautiful that Jason shed a tear.

* * *

**+200**

Ah, Elysium.

it was so beautiful, so peaceful in here that Jason finds it relaxing to his inner torment.

It was _disgusting_.

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by This is Gospel by P!atD


End file.
